“You are not one of us. Go back to Nigeria, the land of scammers.” These words recently echoed across social media in South Africa, targeting 23-year-old Chidimma Adetshina, one of the contestants in the 2024 Miss South Africa competition.
After being named one of the top 11 contestants in the pageant, Adetshina faced severe criticism and online bullying from a cross section of South Africans, who claimed that she was not qualified to compete because of her heritage. Adetshina was born in Soweto, Johannesburg, at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital to a Nigerian father and a Mozambican mother. By law, foreign parents can obtain South African citizenship for their children who are born in the country if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.
The issue is not merely, however, about the technicalities of Adetshina’s birth certificate. It raises broader questions about national identity and representation in South Africa and has opened up a debate about what it means to be South African and who is deemed worthy of representing the country. The controversy reflects tensions about nationality and belonging in South Africa’s diverse society, where race, ethnicity and heritage are interwoven with personal and national identities.
At the first stirrings of controversy over Adetshina’s eligibility, the Miss South Africa organizers said that they did their due diligence and maintained that she was eligible to participate. But this did not stop a torrent of online abuse that culminated in a petition calling for her disqualification. Politicians weighed in as the situation escalated, with Culture Minister Gayton Mackenzie’s right-leaning Patriotic Alliance joining the discussion and threatening to take her to court.
As the pressure mounted, the Department of Home Affairs, prompted by the pageant organizers, investigated Adetshina’s nationality and found evidence that her mother might have committed fraud and identity theft, further complicating Adetshina’s legal status.
Two days before the competition kicked off, Adetshina withdrew from the pageant.
“After much careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw myself from the competition for the safety and well-being of my family and I,” read her statement on Instagram. Immediately after the news broke about her withdrawal from the Miss South Africa pageant, the Miss Universe Nigeria contest invited her to join the competition to “represent your father’s native land.”
Black South Africa’s fragile relationship with the rest of the continent is fraught with flare-ups of xenophobic violence that have seen hundreds killed and displaced from township areas, where ignorance and lack of education contribute to conflagrations. Yet this merely scratches the surface of a deeply rooted problem. South Africa’s race relations are a kaleidoscope of conflicting relationships based on color lines that go back to the first arrival of Dutch settlers in the 17th century, the ancestors of the Afrikaners.
The pageant controversy highlights the little-discussed underbelly of the “rainbow nation.” The ugly discussion on social media reflected the racial and cultural tensions that simmer beneath the surface. It also spilled over into officialdom, because South Africa still hasn’t come to grips with its own nationality.
When British settlers came to the lucrative gold and diamond mines in South Africa in the latter part of the 19th century, they had expertise in mining, finance and international gold markets. The Afrikaners — “the Boers” — resented the influx of outsiders who they felt threatened their way of life and control over the mines. The tension between the British, who were called “uitlanders” (literally outlanders) and Boers escalated into a conflict known as the First Anglo-Boer War in 1880-81, with the Boers prevailing.
The Boer government-imposed restrictions on the uitlanders’ political rights and privileges caused more friction between the two sides, which led to the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899-1902. These two wars were fought between two ostensibly “white” groups on African soil. But, in fact, at the root of this conflict is the uitlander concept, which despite the passage of time has left a lasting effect on the dynamics of identity and nationality in the country.
The uitlander concept encapsulates how South Africa has long been divided based on both origin and ethnicity, a legacy that persists in various forms even today.
“Regrettably apartheid racial coding remains a feature of South African policymaking, and South Africans are reminded every day that what they look like or where they come from still matters,’’ Michael Morris, head of media at the South Africa Institute of Race Relations, told New Lines.
If relations between the different white groups were fraught with differences, it is no surprise that Black South Africans were placed on the lowest footing in the pecking order. This would eventually lead to the rise of the abhorrent system of apartheid that would see them excluded and oppressed up until the early 1990s.
“Swart gevaar” (Afrikaans for black danger) was a term used in South Africa during apartheid to instill fear among the white minority about the supposed threat posed by Black majority rule. It was key in the apartheid government’s propaganda used to justify racial segregation and minority rule. This apartheid agenda portrayed everything associated with Blacks, including their culture, hair, language and skin tone, as dangerous and inferior to whiteness.
Blacks, Coloreds and Indians in South Africa were classified as separate from the whites and marginalized, creating a society where race was the key identifier of national identity, with deep divisions that have persisted in the postapartheid era.
During apartheid, segregation helped to create categories not unlike that of “uitlanders,” and there was tension toward foreigners, even from those within the same racial group. This history has spilled over into the controversy about Adetshina, who was targeted as not truly representative of South Africa by Black South Africans.
When apartheid crumbled under the weight of sanctions, rising violence and the eventual realization in the early ’90s by the then-president, F.W. de Klerk, that there was no other option but its dismantling if South Africa were not to implode, the stage was set for a new dawn for previously disenfranchised sections of society. The belief was that the barriers that had held them back from achieving their aspirations and goals would come tumbling down and that their lives would improve. Yet while there has been change, for many there has been little or no effect on their straitened circumstances.
The socioeconomic and racial challenges that Black South Africans are facing have immensely contributed to the xenophobic sentiments targeted at Adetshina. Popular expectations of “a better life for all” have not been fulfilled, and this dissatisfaction has fueled xenophobia.
When South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy, anti-apartheid activist and Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu coined the term “rainbow nation” to describe a new inclusive national identity that celebrated South Africa’s diverse cultural, ethnic and racial composition. Yet this aspiration has failed to find a secure footing in South African society, which is still deeply divided on race, ethnicity and class.
“The rainbow rhetoric is dangerous,” said Nombulelo Shange, a sociology lecturer at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. “It glosses over the injustices that we went through. It is basically saying that what we went through for the last 300 years must be forgotten because we are one. It is dangerous because it denies us the opportunity to deal with these issues and to introspect.”
Adetshina’s case illustrates the failure of the rainbow nation ideal to take root fully in South Africa, underscoring the gap between the aspiration of a unified society and the lived reality of ongoing national tensions.
South Africa’s racial turbulence has left a mark on its relationship with the rest of Africa, with South Africans often less than welcoming toward the millions who have sought better lives in a country viewed by many as a version of the United States in Africa — a land of opportunity and economic prosperity unmatched anywhere else on the continent.
The deep scars left by colonialism and apartheid have influenced how national identity is constructed and how African foreigners, even those who are naturalized and become citizens, are perceived.
“Chidimma was presumed to be an illegal immigrant and not South African enough to be Miss South Africa because she is Black and of African descent,” Dan Corder, a television presenter with South Africa’s eNCA station, told New Lines. “She was bullied and trolled. The new information about her mother’s alleged fraud doesn’t change the fact that people were Afrophobic based on the old information that they had.”
Corder drew a contrast between Adetshina and an earlier Miss South Africa contestant.
“In 2001, Vanessa Carreira won Miss South Africa,” he said. “She is what South Africa would consider as a white woman, but her parents are of Portuguese-Angolan origin. Because she’s white, even though from Angola, she didn’t experience what Chidimma did.” The cases of Carreira and Adetshina depict the complex nature of identity in South Africa, where race, rather than a shared national identity, continues to be the primary lens through which people are judged.
Despite the efforts to promote a “rainbow nation,” South Africa is struggling to forge a unified national identity that embraces all of its citizens. Twenty-four-year-old Shari Maluleke, who runs a nonprofit organization in Johannesburg called Menstrual Project, maintains that South Africa does not have a national identity because much of the Black population’s history and culture was erased, instilling a deep trauma that made them want to separate themselves from other Africans.
“We are the awkward cousins of Africa, and we don’t know how to claim our identity. We want to have the title that we are better than most African countries,” Maluleke said. “It’s a painful wound for Black South Africans to confront their national identity, because they don’t have a foundation of what their histories look like.”
This struggle with identity is in stark contrast with countries like Nigeria, where a strong sense of pride and patriotism defines what it means to be Nigerian. Both Nigeria and South Africa are dubbed the giants of Africa because of their economic and political muscle on the continent. Both have a rich tapestry of cultures, but Nigeria has largely been able to unite its different cultures under one national identity. The country has made tremendous progress globally through its film industry Nollywood, which is the second-largest in the world. The music genre Afrobeat has gained global recognition and authors like Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe have gained international acclaim, which has enhanced national pride among Nigerians.
Twenty-eight-year-old Faeeza Lok is a social entrepreneur and political activist based in Johannesburg. She is a South African of Asian origin born in Durban and raised in Hong Kong. When she returned to the country of her birth at 15, she experienced a sense of not belonging because of her mixed-race identity.
“The Asian community in South Africa wants a sense of belonging too. In this Chidimma issue we don’t share the same feelings that she’s not South African because we are minorities and we feel marginalized too,” Lok told New Lines. “We have an unconscious bias and we struggle with what it means to be South African unlike Nigerians who have a strong sense of national identity.”
But not all South Africans are worried about the country’s identity fault lines, with some regarding the issue as part of a wider phenomenon. They see what is happening in their country as a mirror of trends that are gaining momentum globally as issues of identity, belonging and citizenship are increasingly debated.
“Taking into account, if one looks at the recent race riots in the U.K. and the increasing support for anti-establishment and populist parties in Europe, we are seeing an increasingly large division between a foreigner and patriot,” 29-year-old philosophy student Mitchell Black told New Lines.
But Cape Town-based historian Lerato Majoro disagrees. “Many of these other countries that are dealing with identity issues face different challenges from us,” she said. “Our main problem was apartheid, and when it was dismantled, we should have tackled how to deal with the scars with one voice. Our nation-building efforts failed dismally.”
The backlash against Adetshina is a stark reminder that South Africa’s attempt to forge a unified national identity stands in limbo and that her experience is not an isolated one but a symptom of a broader societal issue whereby African immigrants are often blamed for social frustrations.
The question remains as to whether South Africa can truly embrace the diversity it proudly displays on its flag and in its slogans or whether these symbols will continue to mask the deep wounds of history.
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